Down from the Highlands

After an unexpected detour to Guatemala City, an unmarked cab ride later took us to the bus-stop to Coban. Finally arriving at Coban after dark we headed swiftly to a hostel. After realising there are two 3rd Avenues and turning the map the right way up... There's not really a lot in Coban. A small central square dominated by a strange modern art sculpture that looks like it was created for a film set (namely X-Men), and is now used predominantly by drunks to shelter from the rain and gaze upon confused tourists.

We swiftly moved on from Coban towards our main destination for central Guatemala, Lanquin. This small village is inundated by tourists from all over the world to visit the Lanquin caves and the famous Semuc Champey, where the river predominantly runs under a natural limestone bridge leaving just a small, gentle flow over the top of the bridge in a series of stepped turquoise pools. Unfortunately this has affected the local population in a negative way and nowhere in Guatemala did we find less friendly or unhelpful people. Once we'd managed to get to the pools (after being messed about and driven in the wrong direction by a pick-up driver, jumping in a different, more crowded pick-up and yours truly being stroked by a young Mayan woman) the cool water was a well welcome break. El Peten in Guatemala is hot and humid. You start sweating from the moment you get out of the shower...

The Lanquin caves were also very interesting, visiting at dusk you get to witness the spectacular exit of thousands of bats through a rather small entrance. Of course you don't really get to witness the bats as they move so fast, all you see is a blur and when the lights in the cave go out you have the rather strange sensation of being airbrushed from all angles as the bats flit past. My second experience of the caves was less impressive. One of the girls on our tour lost her wallet and spoke no Spanish. I went along with her to the police to help translate. The police drove us out to the caves where we hiked through the slippery caves again in the dark (there was no power in Lanquin that evening), 2 torches between 4 of us, accompanied by our guide and a man with a very big gun... We never did find her wallet.

After Lanquin we tried to attain Flores without having to back-track 1.5 hours to Coban. Admitting defeat we ended up in Coban again, managed to find a collectivo to Sayaxche, and upon arrival at Sayaxche we finally understood why there were no direct buses to Flores. We crossed the river by lancha, caught another collectivo the other side and made it to Flores before dark. Flores itself is a town on an island in a lake, attached to the mainland and twin town Santa Elena by a narrow spit of land. Our first day in Flores was characterised by a trip to Isla Santa Barbara where a very strange museum (Mayan artifacts and electronics) is run by a very strange man. One can only suppose that men that live on small islands and run museums are expected to be eccentric and therefore we shouldn't have been surprised when he proceeded to pick up a 2,000 year old jade knife and hacked away at the wooden post supporting the roof to show us it was still sharp. From the looks of the post it wasn't the first time he'd done this demonstration... This was followed by playing equally old Mayan clay whistles, playing a conch shell, wiping his spittle off on Chris's t-shirt then insisting that Chris play the conch, clearly taking much amusement from the raspberry sound that emerged. The tour finished with him playing Land of Hope and Glory on a gramophone, using his finger to turn the record. Finally we were introduced to the DJ of Radio Peten, also based on the island, and allowed to return to the mainland rather confused, but without lasting physical or mental damage.

We visited Tikal on an early morning tour. Not early enough to see sunrise as the gates only officially open at 6am, but early enough to share the rainforest ruins with wildlife. We wandered around the temples rising from the forest to the roars of tree lions (apparently it was the howler monkeys making that noise, but I'm still convinced that there is some species of rare lion living in the trees near the ruins...), the flap of butterflies and the buzz of approximately 6 billion mosquitoes. My major successes that day were climbing the ridiculously steep and shaky steps of temple 5, not having to hold a tarantula and not getting a single mosquito bite! A lot of the ruins at Tikal are restored and it can be hard to know what's rebuilt and what's original, but the sheer scale of the city and the height of the temples, combined with the majesty of them rising out of the rainforest gives the whole site an air of mystery and grandeur that I suspect would not have been present had the whole site been cleared of trees like the grand plaza.